'Some of the parties to which the Prince of Wales virtually insisted that I should go were curious; the oddest of them a supper which he directed to be given on July 1st, 1881, for Sarah Bernhardt, at the wish of the Duc d'Aumale, and at which all the other ladies present were English ladies who had been invited at the distinct request of the Prince of Wales. It was one thing to get them to go, and another thing to get them to talk when they were there; and the result was that, as they would not talk to Sarah Bernhardt and she would not talk to them, and as the Duc d'Aumale was deaf and disinclined to make conversation on his own account, nobody talked at all, and an absolute reign of the most dismal silence ensued….

'On March 13th we had received news of the murder of the Emperor of Russia; and when Lord Granville came to dinner with me (for he dined with me that night to meet the French Ambassador), he told me that I must attend in the morning at a Mass at the Russian Chapel, and attend in uniform. I had two of these Masses at the Russian Chapel in a short time, one for the Emperor and one for the Empress, and painful ceremonies they were, as we had to stand packed like herrings in a small room, stifled with incense, wearing heavy uniform, and carrying lighted tapers in our hands. On this occasion I saw the Prince of Wales go to sleep standing, his taper gradually turn round and gutter on the floor.'

Two months later, Friday, May 27th,

'I dined with Lord and Lady Spencer to meet the King of Sweden and the
Gladstones….

'The King talked to me after dinner about the murder of the Emperor of
Russia…. It was clear that the Swedish loathing for Russia on
account of the loss of Finland was not over. The King might, however,
have reflected upon his own popularity in Norway, a country which had
been given to his grandfather because the people used to hate the
Danes. They now hated the Swedes still more.'

A royalty known to Sir Charles by correspondence was King Mtsa of Uganda, 'who had been presented by us in 1880, at the request of the Queen and the Church Missionary Society, with a Court suit, a trombone, and an Arabic Bible,' but who relapsed early in 1881, and became again the chief pillar of the slave trade in his district. Another strange monarch played his part that year in London society.

'On Sunday, July 10th, Lord Granville wrote to me to ask me to lunch with him the next day to meet "the King of the Cannibal Islands [Footnote: Sandwich Islands, in reality.] at 12.55, an admirable arrangement, as he must go away to Windsor at 1.20." I went, but unfortunately was not able to clear myself of all responsibility for Kalakaua so rapidly, for I was directed to show him the House of Commons; and when he parted from me in the evening in St. Stephen's Hall he asked me for a cigar, and on my offering him my case he put the whole of its contents into his pocket. The Crown Prince of Germany and the Crown Princess (Princess Royal of England) were in London at the same time, and at all the parties the three met. The German Embassy were most indignant that the Prince of Wales had decided that Kalakaua must go before the Crown Prince. At a party given by Lady Spencer at the South Kensington Museum, Kalakaua marched along with the Princess of Wales, the Crown Prince of Germany following humbly behind; and at the Marlborough House Ball Kalakaua opened the first quadrille with the Princess of Wales. When the Germans remonstrated with the Prince, he replied, "Either the brute is a King or else he is an ordinary black nigger, and if he is not a King, why is he here at all?" which made further discussion impossible. Kalakaua, however, having only about 40,000 nominal subjects, most of them American citizens who got up a revolution every time he went away, his kingship was very slight.'

May 20th:

'At this Cabinet a curious matter came up, though not for decision. The Cabinet had been intending to give the commission for the public statue of Lord Beaconsfield to a British sculptor, and I had been trying hard to get it for Nelson Maclean; but a communication from the Queen settled the matter, she absolutely insisting that Boehm should do the statue. Everybody felt that it was wrong that she should interfere, but nobody, of course, resisted.'

On May 27th we hear that the Queen, having received